Performance and Economy

You can get the Hyundai i10 with two petrol engines – a 1.0-litre with 66hp or a more powerful 1.2-litre engine with 87hp. Both come with a five-speed manual gearbox as standard but the 1.2-litre version can be fitted with a smooth four-speed automatic for an extra £650.

Pick the 1.0-litre model if you spend more time driving around town. It doesn’t make the i10 the fastest supermini out there but it’s nippy enough to scoot in and out of traffic. Around town it’s smooth and impressively quiet for a city car but on the motorway it’ll struggle to keep up with fast-moving traffic on steep gradients. Hyundai claims it’ll return 60.1mpg but you’ll probably see a real-world figure in the low fifties.

The i10’s nippy enough around town but starts to struggle on motorways. It’s pretty comfortable, however, and impressively quiet for such a small car

Mat Watson

carwow expert

The 1.2-litre engine feels happier on A roads and motorways than the 1.0-litre model and will be a better bet if you regularly travel longer distances. It certainly feels faster, but it makes a loud drone if you accelerate hard. You can expect it to return around 50mpg.

The optional £650 four-speed automatic gearbox feels far smoother than the jerky items you’ll find in a VW Up and Citroen C1 and won’t lurch unexpectedly when you’re trying to park.

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Driving

A slightly raised seating position, large windows and thin windscreen pillars offer good forward visibility and make the i10 easy to thread through town traffic. There’s a slight blind spot caused by the rear door pillars and the three rear headrests – standard on all models – obscure your view out of the rear windscreen slightly.

The fairly soft suspension can soak up an impressive amount of pothole abuse without jarring or bouncing around. As a result, it’s one of the most comfortable city cars around and even feels reasonably stable at motorways speeds. All but entry-level S models come with cruise control as standard, too – providing you pick a model with a manual gearbox.

The Hyundai i10 doesn’t lean too much in corners and grips well on twisty back roads, but it’s not as fun to drive as the Kia Picanto. It feels slightly more relaxing to drive, however, and does a great job of shutting out unpleasant wind and tyre noise.

It received a four-star Euro NCAP safety rating in 2014 before it was updated in 2017. Expect this new model to be awarded a higher score in light of its new standard brake assist system and the collision warning features fitted to high-spec models.

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